This year has been a tough one for most of the car industry, with established brands facing up to an onslaught of new names, mostly from China. But while that’s made life difficult for manufacturers, it has led to some great deals for consumers.
With 2025 coming to a close, it’s now time to round up the very best new cars launched in the last 12 months for our annual Car of the Year awards, to help you decide what car you should be buying over the next year.
In a sea of different new car awards, what makes The Car Expert Awards 2026 different? We have the power of our unique Expert Rating Index.
Rather than just give you our opinion on a new car, we manually curate reviews and scores from more than 30 of the UK’s leading motoring websites (including our own), with more than 17,500 car reviews from all of these titles. On top of that, we gather safety ratings from Euro NCAP, official CO2 emissions, running costs from our partners at Clear Vehicle Data, reliability data from our partners at MotorEasy, and new car warranty data for every vehicle.
Since we’re only looking at models launched in the last 12 months for our Best Car Awards, we have created a bespoke algorithm that’s different to our usual Expert Rating Index, as we don’t have reliability data for brand-new vehicles and we don’t have complete servicing cost information for every model.
While it hasn’t been quite as hectic as last year, our class of 2026 consists of 58 new entries to the UK car market, 34 of which are electric vehicles. Our cut-off date is 31 October, so some of the cars eligible this year actually went on sale at the end of last year.
And the winner is…
Our Expert Rating Index, based on reviews from more than 30 of the UK’s leading motoring websites, shows that electric vehicles continue to earn higher review scores than their petrol and diesel equivalents. This has been evident for the last few years, and has continued to be the case this year. For the fifth consecutive year, our overall winner is an electric car.
Based on all of the car reviews published by the UK motoring media over the last year, The Car Expert’s Car of the Year 2026 is the Skoda Elroq.
The Car Expert Car of the Year 2026: Skoda Elroq
The Skoda Elroq is the ideal new family car for 2026, so it’s no surprise to see it winning our top award.
It’s well-designed, cost-effective to run, and has a five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP. It offers a smart, spacious interior with clever, practical features, and the driving experience is refined and comfortable.
All of this comes at a very competitive price, making it an all-round champion and worthy winner of The Car Expert’s Car of the Year 2026 Award. It also picks up our Best Small Crossover 2026 award.
The Car Expert Awards 2026 – all the category winners
We’ve updated the award categories for this year to reflect the evolving new-car market and the diverse range of car buyers’ wants and needs.
This year, we have introduced three new award categories:
- ‘Best Value Family Car’ – for those looking for the best new family runaround on a budget
- ‘Best Petrol Family Car’ – for new car buyers who would prefer to stick with petrol power for their next family-friendly set of wheels
- ‘Best Plug-in Hybrid Family Car’ – for those interested in plug-in hybrid vehicles that offer the best of both worlds
